NIIT launches ‘India’s Nxt Tech Star’ movement

-Announces nation-wide talent hunt to build the next gen IT workforce –

Renewing its commitment towards building India’s Nxt Gen IT workforce, NIIT Limited, a global leader in skills and talent development, today announced the launch of diginxt ‘India’s Nxt Tech Star’ movement, a hunt for the next gen techie who can showcase real App ideas to the world.

The registrations for India’s Nxt Tech Star will be open from 16th May 2017 to 30th June 2017.

As per MIT, around 77% of companies consider missing digital skills as the key hurdle to their digital transformation. Also, according to the World Economic Forum report, Five years from now, over one-third of skills (35%) that are considered important in today’s workforce will have changed. These developments will bring about a transformation in the current working scenario. The process has already begun and is rapidly accelerating, with both IT companies as well as IT departments of large corporations scrambling to address the acute shortage of skills.

NIIT has taken up the challenge of developing the Nxt Gen IT workforce for meeting the requirements of an evolving Digital economy. Its nation-wide movement of building ‘India’s Nxt Tech Star’ will call upon the youth to develop the next generation app, on futuristic platforms such as – Social Networking, Movies & Music, Travel, Sports & Fitness and Finance. Post 14 week duration of mentorship, the top 5 students from each idea category would be selected for the Grand Finale to be organized in Bengaluru in November 2017. The 25 shortlisted projects from 250 NIIT centres across India, would be showcased to an eminent jury comprising tech stalwarts and industry leaders. These 25 ideas, solving real life problems will be showcased as ‘India’s Nxt Tech Star’ to the world.

Speaking on the launch of India’s Nxt Tech Star movement, Prakash Menon, President, Global Retail Business, NIIT Ltd. said, “Technology is fast changing. Platforms that are used today may become redundant tomorrow. Therefore, just skilling our youth is not enough, we need innovators and quick thinkers. India’s Nxt Tech Star has been designed to encourage the spirit of innovation in youth, inspiring them to become the next tech idol who can redefine the world of technology.”An engineering or science graduate, not more than 25 years of age and with at least 60% marks in their graduation/post-graduation in any science discipline, enrolling for the May and June batches of the Java Enterprise with DevOps, MEAN Stack or Big Data programs under NIIT digiNxt can join the initiative. Students can walk-in to the nearest NIIT centre or to identified Café Coffee Day outlets in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Pune, Kolkata, Hyderabad & Bangalore, to enrol.

Once enrolled for the Diginxt program the students can sign up for India’s Nxt Tech Star, wherein they will be provided with the option to choose a category of their interest. The Interested students will have to attend additional two-hour session every week where the ideas would be discussed further and they would be mentored by experts to create their app.

India’s Nxt Tech Star would be chosen on the basis of Innovation Quotient of the project, Usability/Design, Market Potential of the idea. Students are expected to build, test and release a complete demonstrable version of their app. The projects will be judged by a combination of top architects, start-up CTOs and product managers. The tech used for the projects would largely be up to the student, and is expected to showcase futuristic stacks, awesome UX and a large degree of smarts embedded into the app.

The winner will be awarded a cash prize of Rs. 2,50,000/- from NIIT. The first runner-up will win a cash prize of Rs. 1,00,000/- and the second runner-up win a cash prize of Rs. 25,000/-. All the finale participants will be given a certificate of appreciation & merchandise worth Rs. 2000/-.